Return To Oz
by Diabolikal Luna
Summary: Dumbledore takes Tom Riddle to the great beyond or not so great in his case.


**Return To Oz**

_"You did wrong, Tom and now you are going to pay for eternity. There's no going back now. Hell awaits your service. There is no place for you amongst decent people. There is no place for you in heaven," and with that, Albus Dumbledore pushed the man who had stolen many years from innocent people and forced him into eternal damnation._

_Dumbledore, was now at rest._

Harry Potter swiped a stream of blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand and Voldemort stared across at his young victim with venomous eyes. The Dark Lord was far from fallen, yet it seemed that Harry had put up an amazing fight.

They had managed to make Voldemort mortal. The boy that had troubled him for years—with a group of his pesky friends—had managed to find and destroy, every one of his scattered pieces of soul. Every piece of his individual life, they had taken, making him vulnerable and finally, capable of death.

He wouldn't go though. He had always been afraid of dieing. There was nothing for him after death and he certainly didn't want to explore it. He saw no problem with killing though, sending his many victims too the peril that he was to scared to investigate. They could go first. It was a dog-eat-dog world. Survival of the fittest. Why should the undeserving live?

He smiled. Harry certainly did look weak and how Voldemort wanted to hear the ending of that prophecy. It didn't matter any longer. Voldemort was about to fulfil it. He was sure that he was about to complete the task that had been grounded for nearly two decades ago.

The boy was breathing deeply now, his wand held in a limp hand, his emerald eyes fading into olive. For a second, Voldemort was reluctant to kill the boy in front of him and he couldn't understand why. It was mere seconds that this thought crossed his mind, however and he raised his wand high, ready to kill the boy without mercy. Mercy. Voldemort cursed the man who had created that word.

In a raspy voice, he spoke. "Avada Kedavra," Voldemort's wand-- pointed directly at Harry's chest—omitted a luminous, green light. An unusual blast of smoke erupted from around Harry's body as he fell to the floor.

Voldemort cackled in delight.

He certainly didn't feel any different. Nothing at all. He lowered his wand for a moment and allowed his hand to rub his forehead as it had started to ache. A sharp, searing pain was rattling around his head and in an attempt to make it stop, the Dark Wizard dropped his wand at his side and clutched onto his head.

Voldemort could sense that someone was coming to him. Moving slowly, wearily and slightly uncertainly. He tried to call for them but as he opened his mouth, nothing but blood escaped. It trickled down his aging lips, down his rotting neck and finally, began to pool onto the floor in a slippery, lake of death.

**Once there was a man, who had a little too much time on his hands. He never stopped to think that he was getting older.**

Voldemort dropped onto his knees. His eyes were discolouring into a pearly white and his hands continued to clutch onto his head, a strange gash appearing at the front of it. He couldn't think clearly. He couldn't begin to find any reasons for this to be happening. Was this death? How could he be dying? That certainly wasn't part of the deal.

As he grabbed onto his knees in a curled up ball, all the years that he had stolen from every person that he had ever killed, began to take his life away. Every second that he whimpered in pain, a year was added to his aging body.

As the person bent over him, Voldemort tried to grab onto the mans dark robes. His efforts were in vein though, as his hand was too skeletal to grip the fine material. Surely this was one of his fellow Death Eaters, here to save him and stop this cruel reality? After all, he had given them all so much.

**When his night came to an end, he tried to grasp for his last friend and pretend that he could wish himself health on a four-leave clover.**

He became delirious and was positive that the man towering above him, was now standing in pure white robes, trimmed in gold. His lungs began to deflate and as he closed his eyes for a moment, he had been sure that Harry Potter was standing up from the ground, his wand smouldering and placed in front of his heart, turning into ashes.

As though his body was taking back leaps, with great strength, Voldemort was able to stand again. Strangely, his lungs remained the same—no air wanted to pass through them—but his body was recuperating life and blood.

This was it. Potter was going to die for good this time—there was no turning back and that boy was going to suffer for the humanity and humility he had put him through. Was someone testing him or did this boy just have every much of a will to live, as he had done?

However, as Voldemort fully stood, he reached down to pick up his wand and found it nowhere. In panic, his hands fell in front of him to feel the ground. He paused. They were younger. He was getting younger, although, he seemed to have stopped. He must have been seventeen, give or take a year. In bewilderment, he continued to stare. Scared.

"Look around you, Tom," a voice spoke gently, without fear or despair. A familiar voice of someone he had known many years. Someone he knew to be dead.

Where was he? Voldemort's face scrunched up. The sky was dark and he certainly had travelled without his knowledge. He wasn't in Hogsmede anymore. If he knew better, he'd say that he wasn't even on earth but that would be ridicules.

**He said; is this the return to Oz? The grass is dead, the gold is brown and the sky has claws. There's a wind-up toy walking round and round, what once was Emerald City's now a crystal town.**

A surge of defeat surrounded Voldemort's body and a strange, troubled feeling arose in his throat. If this was death, it was all wrong. He wasn't ready, he never would be. He wanted to go back, why couldn't he go back?

He turned his head quickly, to see who had spoken. His assumptions were correct. Albus Dumbledore was standing opposite him, slightly taller and at the age he had been when he had informed Tom that he was a wizard.

"They're all dead, Tom," why was the blasted man talking so innocently? He wanted answers; yet, no words would come out of his mouth, nothing at all. It was firmly stitched together with silence. "Everyone who you killed. All the people that died under your command. The ones who died for you. All innocent and all dead."

**It's three o'clock in the morning. You get a phone call from the queen with a hundred heads; she says that they're all dead. She tried the last one on, it couldn't speak, fell off and now she just wonders the hall, feeling nothing, feeling nothing at all.**

"Walk with me, Tom."

He wanted to shout no but it appeared he had no choice. As Dumbledore beckoned him forward, his feet followed and were no longer in his control. There was a foul smell on the air. The smell of death and if his mouth could have opened, he would probably have been sick.

The fazed outline of a woman appeared before him. He did not know who she was, nor did he care but he watched her intensively as Dumbledore stood before her. The young woman allowed pearly tears to fall freely from her cheeks. So young. He would have enjoyed killing her.

**She says; is this the return to Oz? The grass is dead, the gold is brown and the sky has claws. There's a wind up man walking round and round, what once was Emerald City's now a crystal town.**

Dumbledore wavered his wand around the shadowy female and a hole appeared in the air beside her. She floated through, as Dumbledore gave her a sad look of pity. She had been sent back to earth as a ghost, as she could not part with the solid world.

Dumbledore began to walk forward and once again, there was nothing in Voldemort's power to restrain himself. As they walked ever on, in eternal silence, Voldemort began to notice people appearing to the sides of him.

No, not people, something else. His stomach knotted. Bodies, crawling on the floor; rotten hands dragging carcases as they moved towards him. He wanted to speed up his pace but he couldn't, as the corpses crawled ever closer.

Then he saw them. Every person he had ever killed, gathered in a huge assembly. Cheering proudly as Dumbledore lead him closer to them. Was this the land of the dead or perhaps something else? One of the corpses managed to attach itself to his leg. He screamed in silence and his crowd laughed heartily. He continued to walk behind Dumbledore on a brick worked road of red.

He knew everyone of them, some by name but every one of them, he knew by face. Especially the youngest. A young girl of no more than six. Still dressed in the same clothes he had killed her in. A patchwork cape and purple hat.

**The wheelies are cutting pavement and the Skeksis at the rave meant to hide deep inside, their sunken faces and their wild rolling eyes. But their callous words reveal, that they can no longer feel love or sex appeal. The patchwork girl has come to cinch the deal to return to Oz.**

As his legs continued to drag him on further, Voldemort tried to block out the noises of the cluster of people. His feet were lagging because of the corpses that were being dragged behind him. So many of them, near enough one for every person he had ever killed.

Suddenly, Dumbledore stopped and Voldemort was relieved to find himself standing freely. He looked up at Dumbledore; the same look of horror and need in his eyes, that every one of his victims had given him.

Dumbledore didn't laugh or curse him. He simply looked sadly at him and shook his head, as if blaming himself for ever telling him that he was a wizard. Voldemort wondered what would have happened, if he had never found out and suddenly, he wanted to use his own name. Tom.

An archway appeared in front of the two men. Different from any that Voldemort had seen before. The bricks were infested with crawling maggots and the drapes that were blowing around it, were black and torn.

From somewhere inside the archway, came the sound of wailing, pain and terror. Voldemort stared at it, trying to pull himself backwards but being forced forwards by the corpses as he tried. He wanted to escape and from the corner of his eye, he spotted a quivering group of Death Eaters.

"Help me," he mouthed but no words were ever heard.

**We've fled the world, with smiles and clenching jaws. Please help me friend from coming down, I've lost my place and now it can't be found.**

"Your followers have paid for their wrong doings, Tom but some debts can never be repaid. Not in a million years," Dumbledore's voice never changed in tone, it just remained clean and airy. "They need not follow you to your destiny."

He walked forwards, cursing his own stupidity. Dumbledore was pulling him forwards somehow and the corpses were pushing him from behind. A new form of terror surged through Voldemort's body and seconds before he reached the veil, it changed into a mirror.

**Is this the return to Oz? The grass is dead, the gold is brown and the sky has claws. There's a wind up man walking round and round, what once was Emerald City's now a crystal town.**

Voldemort knew exactly what he was looking at; the Mirror of Desire. He tried to turn his head away but he was not given the chance to. As his eyes glared into the reflected glass, they widened in shock and horror.

His reflection was not his own. Standing in his place—in the exact positioning that he should have been in—was Harry Potter. Voldemort was given the chance to pull his right hand up to his forehead and feel the scar that was positioned on his head. As he did so, the reflection made exactly the same movement.

He wanted to scream a deafening 'no,' but once again, he had been unable to do anything with his lips or tongue. Voldemort felt himself lift his arm once again but this time, the reflection waved. A sarcastic, unkind wave.

Suddenly, there was a chilling gust of wind, as the daunting veil appeared once more. From between the archways, a black sheet appeared and as though forming a shape, it began to pull in closer to Voldemort. A large metallic claw was drawing ever closer.

"You did wrong, Tom and now you are going to pay for eternity. There's no going back now. Hell awaits your service. There is no place for you amongst decent people. There is no place for you in heaven."

Voldemort could do nothing but shake his head in dread. His eyes glistening with horror and his body weak with fear.

Albus Dumbledore pushed the man who had stolen many years from innocent people and forced him into eternal damnation. As a thousand hands wrapped around his body, suffocating the flow of blood, Voldemort could hear cheering from somewhere on the other side of the veil. Where he was headed, he could hear nothing but violent screams.

Dumbledore had done it. He had finally ridded the world of him and Voldemort suddenly remembered the reason why he had only ever feared Dumbledore. He was the one that had told him—Tom Marvalo Riddle—what he was and what he could do.

And then, there was nothing put pain and he knew that Dumbledore must have finally been at rest.

The lyrics are a favourite of mine and belong to the Scissor Sisters. :)


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